Almost Too Much
by Embolalia
Summary: Brennan sat up, finally reaching the conclusion she'd avoided for an entire year. She had to fix this, had to be the reckless one for once. Tag to 5x22 The Beginning in the End
1. Separation: Brennan

**Almost Too Much**

Just a post-finale drabble. I'm thinking about doing another chapter from Booth's perspective, and maybe a reunion scene. Not sure yet... Let me know what you think?

* * *

Perhaps it was hormones. She tried to count back to her last period, tried to focus on the dates and not the tears. But no, it was only two weeks ago. There was no logical explanation for this.

Temperance Brennan sat down on the lid of the airplane toilet and rested her forehead against the edge of the sink a foot in front of her. She closed her eyes hard and another tear streaked down her cheek.

She'd had two days to pack, and while she knew that Booth had already reported for duty, she'd also hoped he could come to her. Brennan didn't know what she thought would happen if he did, but somehow her apartment didn't feel like home without him. Last night, laying in bed, she tried to tell herself it was excitement for Maluku that was keeping her awake, even as she listened for the faintest sound in the hall that might signal a midnight visitor. Twice she got out of bed, tiptoed to the peep-hole, checked just in case she wasn't imagining the creek of the floorboards. She was.

But after all that, she still expected him to come to the airport. She told herself it was more rational to expect him there than at her home; it was customary to see one's friends off, and Sweets and Cam had come even though they weren't flying off anywhere. Yet when she looked up across the room and saw Booth, Brennan didn't feel relief. Instead a sudden physical ache tightened her chest. She moved toward him.

They stopped a foot apart, but for them it was a gulf as serious as the thousand miles that would divide them in a matter of hours. She pleaded with him to come back to her, because it was too late to ask him not to go. Brennan could see in his eyes the same emotion he'd tried to express months earlier: the same love, the same pain at whatever kept them apart. In the instant before he could lean in and kiss her, she dropped her eyes.

Booth clutched her hand instead, but they both knew what they'd lost. And she imagined they both knew that it was her fault. That if she had only been a bit more loving, a bit warmer, they could have avoided this pain. Just as she had done, he made her promise that this wasn't the end. That they'd see each other in a year. And then he walked away. Because she couldn't ask him not to.

As she turned back to Daisy, the weight of separation, of responsibility, sank down on her chest so heavily that Brennan stopped, turned to catch one last glimpse of him. He was already watching her, and the first tears sprang to her eyes. How had she come to this, to be this cold person walking away from the only man in the world whom she had ever believed when he professed his love?

Then he was gone.

She waited until Daisy's sedative had kicked in to go to the bathroom. In private the tears had begun to slip out, beyond her control, beyond any kind of reason. She was good at crying silently, had been since she was fifteen. Today she couldn't seem to stop.

For years she had relied on Booth to recognize her weakest moments, to prop her up before she could fall apart like this. Now she was alone again; for the next 364 days she would have to go back to surviving on her own. It was almost too much.


	2. Separation: Booth

**Almost Too Much**

He spent the drive back to the base cursing Sweets, first in his head, then out loud, louder and louder until he pulled off the highway onto a road cut to scream at the top of his lungs.

Finally out of breath, Booth slid back in the driver's seat of his car and rested his forehead against the top of the steering wheel. Something in him threatened to break, to loose the tears that were quivering inside, but Booth took a deep breath, held them back.

It wasn't Sweets' fault. He knew that, or at least he knew Brennan would think that. But if Sweets hadn't written the damn book, hadn't pushed him to gamble when neither of them wanted to lose what they had, when Brennan was terrified of changing the status quo—well, maybe she wouldn't have wanted to leave in the first place. But even if she had, he would still have had hope. Would still have been in a world where he could imagine going to her door the night before they were separated for what felt like forever. Where he could imagine not only knocking and entering but kissing her, over and over, and not meeting rejection.

Booth straightened in the driver's seat and rubbed a hand over his face. He would have done it, as simple as that. When you have nothing left to lose, it's the best time to gamble. And he was losing her. Had lost her; her plane was already taking off. He'd acted too early, prompted by a kid he'd never been sure he liked.

He sighed. If Brennan were here, she'd tell him...what? He closed his eyes and tried to imagine her in the passenger's seat. Probably something about logic or game theory or mumbo jumbo about probability. And then he'd tell her that people were delicate, had to be approached the right way. He'd tell her that there would be other chances.

It was what he'd said to himself on the drive to the airport: this could be a chance. And as he walked up to her, right up until she dropped her eyes, he meant to do it, meant to kiss her goodbye with everything in him, just in case. But she looked away, and he wouldn't ruin this last moment by kissing her when she didn't want it. Just in case this was it. So he held her hand. His fingers still seemed residually aware of her and he clenched his fist, imagining her there.

None of it fixed things, though. He still wished that she'd been in his arms last night, that she'd be in his arms tonight. And he wouldn't even get to see her for 364 more days. It was almost too much.

Booth turned the car on and pulled away from the road cut. There would be other chances.


	3. Reunion: Booth

**Almost Too Much**

May 2011

It was bizarre, really, how for every moment of the last year it had felt like an eternity since he last saw Bones, but now that he was just a few hours away from seeing her again all that time had faded and it felt like only moments had passed.

Booth couldn't help wondering if it felt the same to her. Did she still think of him the same way? Had she changed over there in the jungle? The emails he got periodically were perfunctory, emotionless. At the time he'd been sure she was just protecting herself, but now, pacing his apartment in the middle of the night, Booth was no longer certain. Was she covering up the fact that she had found someone and didn't want to tell him through email? Did she write him only because he wrote to her first?

Booth slumped down on the floor, leaning back against the couch. He rested his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking somewhere between a laugh and a sob. The man he used to be would have gone to her right now, screw the plan.

The first time he went off to war, Booth didn't have a child, didn't have a partner—had no one but Jared, who shared his own exhilaration with danger, with war. He went to fight with just enough caution to keep him alive, and more than enough bravado to make him effective. If there had even been a chance this woman was waiting for him, he'd have run to her without a second thought.

This time was different. In Bones' absence Booth had had to fill her role in his life for himself. In Afghanistan he held himself back from unnecessary risks. Over and over he let her voice in his head remind him to slow down and listen carefully to the specialists and their big words. He was no longer the most impulsive guy on the team, no longer someone with little to lose. He grew more like her than he'd ever have imagined. At some level he'd never admit, he wanted to make Bones proud.

Booth sighed heavily. The plan was to meet tomorrow. The coffee cart near the reflecting pool on the mall. Bones liked plans, and he knew for a fact that rushing into things made them unpredictable, made them dangerous. Booth glanced at the clock. Two AM. He could make it.


	4. Reunion: Brennan

**Almost Too Much**

May 2011

Brennan smiled her thanks again and closed the door firmly behind Angela. She sighed. She and Daisy had gotten delayed at their transfer in Los Angeles and she'd worried for hours that they'd have to stay the night there, that she'd be late to meet Booth. In the end, though, she was home, and in twelve hours she had an appointment to meet him.

She laid her hand on the door again for a moment, weighing an idea in her mind, then turned away, grabbing the handle of her suitcase and rolling it toward the bedroom to empty out her dirty laundry. For all her time away, the task could still be performed by rote, and Brennan's mind slipped to other thoughts.

When she'd first gotten to the Jeffersonian, Brennan had been surprised and then pleased to find that most of the people she was working with shared her disdain for unnecessary personal interaction and preferred to focus on science. While some of Angela and Hodgins' exploits had gone over her head, she'd felt at home in an intellectual community.

Until Booth, anyway. Until suddenly she was constantly forced to confront the social dynamics fluctuating constantly around her, never within reach of her understanding or involvement. He'd pushed her to understand, pushed her to connect. It had been terribly intimidating.

The first week in Maluku, Brennan found it a relief to be back in a place where only intellect mattered, where awkwardness was assumed and irrelevant. Even Daisy, as off-kilter as she sometimes was, didn't stand out in her ineptitude in the camp of anthropologists.

The second week, Brennan had said it "felt right" to explore an adjacent section of the forest, and two dozen pairs of eyes turned to her. She protested that instinct was probably based on non-conscious processing, but couldn't help feeling all day that she was being ostracized for not being clinical enough.

To her much greater surprise, it felt a little good. As the weeks and months passed, Brennan pushed the dig onward with her hunches and instincts. She found a certain exhilaration in being impulsive, in being, though she ignored the connection even when Daisy pointed it out, like Booth.

She reached the smooth fabric bottom of the suitcase and sat down on the bed. What was Booth doing right now? Brennan closed her eyes and fell back on the bed. She'd tried not to think of him too much, because thinking of him only reminded her how much different both their lives would be if only she'd let them get involved. She might not be in the jungle with strangers, he might not be in mortal danger in Afghanistan...if she let herself dwell too long Brennan quickly found herself shaking with anxiety, with self-recrimination.

Brennan sat up, finally reaching the conclusion she'd avoided for an entire year. She had to fix this, had to be the reckless one for once.

Without pausing to analyze, she leapt from the bed and headed for the door.

xxx

A knock startled Booth from his reflections, and he rose stiffly from the floor beside his couch. He opened the door without checking the peephole.

Booth couldn't see how the sight of her transformed his face, but Brennan did.

"I thought—why wait?" she said simply, assuredly.

He started to step backward so she could enter, but Brennan threw her arms around his neck, locking him in place.

She smiled reassuringly upward, then kissed him.


End file.
